


Not Today

by ToreyTaylor



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Family Feud - Freeform, Forbidden Love, Lovers, Teen Romance, Young Love, kidnap, young adult fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-29
Updated: 2013-05-29
Packaged: 2017-12-13 09:06:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/822530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToreyTaylor/pseuds/ToreyTaylor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two teens find themselves in an impossible situation. Jessica's intuition tells them they're going to die, until she decides to fight back...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not Today

She had always wanted them to be together forever, but, as she looked around at her bleak, dusty surroundings, this was not the way she had imagined it. She was shaking with fright and with cold and she could feel that he was too. She looked back at her past; their past. It was the one glimmer of light she could find to cling on to.

She was just three years old when she met Lee and he was four. Even back then she looked up at him. He was more like a brother than a lover, though it wasn't long until it developed into something more. They were too young to realise they were in love, or even to reciprocate each other's love but each couldn't break away from the romantic bond that had bound them.

Bound. The word brought her glumly back to the grimy, foul basement in which she and her boyfriend were tied up together. The rope had been used forcefully, with strong, able hands. Neither of them would be able to get free. She didn't want to believe it but she learned in life that there were good things and bad things, equally as powerful, that were beyond anyone's control. She felt, also, that they were here for a reason. She shivered and closed her eyes, trying desperately to lull herself back to thoughts of her, no their, childhood, a past that she was so happy to have lived, but one not without its hardships.

At eleven years-old, she was told by her parents, especially her father, that it was all so wrong. All they ever did at that age was kiss and cuddle but no one had ever believed them, and definitely not her father. There became a bitter feud between Lee's family and her family. To his family, she was a manipulative slut, at just eleven, even though she was still a virgin. To her family he was a creep, a paedophile in the making. In the end it all got too much for everyone involved and decisions were made.

At twelve, she moved to Wales with her family against her will, leaving Lee back in York. It was terrible, leaving him, but she had no choice. She was only twelve. His family hated her and her family hated him. Unbeknownst to anyone else however, they kept in touch. At first it was just letters. It could only be letters. Each family had had their telephone numbers changed. Every Friday he'd write her a letter and she'd hastily write one back. She would always get up really early on a Friday and pretend that there was a kid's programme she enjoyed watching, if anyone was suspicious about her early morning wanders to the living room.

She soon became aware of a startling and equally as devastating realisation. It made her feel angry at herself, too, and often she would just sit there and cry, feeling utterly guilty. She was beginning to forget what Lee sounded like. She scrawled her phone number on one of her letters, and asked him to ring her on a Sunday morning when her parents had gone to church. She had never believed in God and her parents seemed to resent her for that, too. Every small mishap in her life, every ache, every pain, every time she felt sad, was attributed to the fact that it was God's way of making her pay for not believing. The following Sunday, he rang her and she heard his voice for the first time in years. She was surprised to hear that his voice had gotten deeper but it wasn't shocking. Lee had made the tough transition between boy and man and she realised then that they had both missed so much. She yearned to be close to him again.

At fifteen, eight months after the first phone call, she ran away. Lee had been staying with a friend in Scarborough and she had decided to live there with him. It was a pokey little apartment with garish wallpaper, orange carpet throughout all the rooms and with appliances that hardly worked but they were together and she thought that the bond of true love far outweighed the bonds of four walls. His friend eventually moved to another apartment, partly due to him wanting his friends to finally get a place of their own and partly, they both thought, because he felt like he was intruding on something special. It was hard, and some months they barely were able to scrape by, but they had each other and that made it okay. They knew they could survive. When she turned sixteen, she lost her virginity to Lee and he lost his to her. It felt so right. She remembered lying in the bed afterwards, with his strong arms cocooning around her naked torso and his warm breath caressing her cheeks. She felt loved, wanted; she felt safe.

She was jolted back to reality by the sound of him sobbing. She looked up at his eyes. They were sodden, the deep brown irises glistening. His lips were quivering and she wanted to touch them with her finger, make them stop quivering and make him feel like there was nothing to fear, just like that night last year, but she couldn't. Her hands were tied behind her back. The rope dug into her flesh and it burned. Every time she tried to free her wrists the ropes binding them would tighten like they were snakes coiling around prey. Her legs had gone numb because she had stayed in one position for so long. It felt like her body was already starting to give up.

"Jessica, I love you," he wept. "And I don't want anything bad to happen to you."

Warm, salty tears ran down her cheeks and into her mouth the instant that he spoke. Her eyes began to burn as she tried to stay brave. He was trying to protect her, even now. Even now, when they were both tied up, unable to move, unable to accept their fate. She knew what was going to happen. As a child she had thought she'd been blessed with a special gift. Back then, she thought she was psychic. She knew how to read people and situations and always tended to be right about people. As she got older, she had come to realise that, while perhaps not gifted with that strange and possibly non-existent power, she was indeed an intuitive person. Sometimes, she wished she wasn't. She had the overpowering sense, and it buzzed through her, that they were both going to die here. What Jessica didn't sense were their kidnappers' shocking familiarity.

Neither of them had known who they were before. One, presumably a male, with hulking shoulders and short, stocky legs, was wearing a crude Parker jacket that appeared too big for even a man of his shape, the fur lined hood covering his forehead and a tight-fitting balaclava on his face. His partner was a thin female and wore a wiry grey cardigan that looked rather uncomfortable to wear with the hood pulled tightly around her head and huge, gaudy sunglasses that covered a lot of her face. The last thing Jessica noticed before she was rendered unconscious and dragged to the basement was the gold brooch of an abstract fish pinned on the woman's cardigan. She hadn't enough time to contemplate where she had seen that brooch before.

Now, as the woman removed her hood and plucked her sunglasses from her face and onto the dusty floor, Jessica knew exactly where she had seen that brooch and she didn't want to believe that her own mother was staring back at her, arms crossed across her chest sternly, the brooch gleaming in the cobweb infested light bulb on the ceiling that cast a faint, artificial light throughout the room. Her eyes bore the look of someone who was on the verge of losing their temper and slamming their fists into whatever stood in their path, be it a human or a brick wall. Or daughter. Her lips were pursed and she looked ready to condemn a person to hell. Jessica shuddered as she got the sense that her own mother actually was going to condemn her to hell. It hadn't stopped her from doing it before…

The man she was keeping company with finally revealed himself too. He lowered his hood and ripped the balaclava from his head, throwing it down on to the floor. Plumes of dust, years old, rose into the air. His hair was crew-cut, dark brown. His moustache was thin and bristly. Eerily of all, his eyes were the same colour as Lee's; the only difference was that while Lee's eyes were warm and full of love, the man's eyes were dark and hateful, full of murderous intent. Her mother and his father. Two feuding families had decided to join forces to extract revenge upon their own children, their own flesh and blood. It sounded like it had come straight from a romantic saga tinged with tragedy.

"Dad?" Lee asked, a puzzled tone to his voice, yet all too aware of what his dad was doing down here in the basement. "Dad…what…what are you doing? This can't be real. Jessica, we're dreaming. Right?"

"You betrayed us," Jessica's mother began. "You betrayed us all. And in time, we came to a realisation. We aren't bad people. After all, it isn't the mother of the mad man that killed twenty people in a frenzied attack's fault. She might have given birth to a monster, but it was he who carried out the awful crime, not her. We raised two rotten apples, and in time, two bad apples will eventually spoil the decent ones. We simply can't let the two of you paedophiles continue."

"Paedophiles?!" Jessica screamed. "Are you out of your mind?" Jessica already knew the answer to that. Her own mother was crazy. "We fell in love with each other! How is that a crime? How…how can you even compare that to paedophilia? Lee waited until I was sixteen before he took my virginity. And let me tell you, it was brilliant! Well worth the wait!"

"You whore! Shut up! Shut up! Shut UP!"

Lee's father, who had until now remained quiet, like a hulking statue, spoke. His voice didn't match his physique. He was quiet, speaking not much louder than a whisper, as if he was trying to contain a terrible, destructive power from within his own heart. Jessica realised he was a madman trying to pass himself off as a decent and law-abiding citizen, a loyal husband, a good father.

"Better do as your mother tells you, Jessica. You really don't want to make this harder for yourselves, do you? Lee…" His gaze met his son's but Lee looked down at the ground. A tear dropped on the floor and Jessica had heard it. "I always thought you were my son, my flesh and blood…until I realised you were lusting for that whore. And then I realised. We both realised. You were never our son, not really. We wouldn't spawn something like you. You're the Devil's child and the Devil didn't want you."

Lee was sobbing hard now, and Jessica wanted to cuddle him, cushion him with her body warmth, run her hands on his face and wipe away the tears. Her hands wriggled behind her back and twisted, her fingers curling and then stretching outwards repeatedly. The rope dug into her flesh and felt even more like a snake ensnaring prey – this time releasing its venom directly into her veins. Lee was sobbing, harder and harder, his brain seeing the truth, his heart trying to tear itself away from it. His arm was trembling. She wanted to connect her left hand with his right, but no matter how much she tried, she couldn't get it far enough to the left.

"Nothing to say?" his dad said. "More's the pity. I would have enjoyed hearing you trying to squirm your way out of this one…"

"Enough!" Jessica boomed, the muscles either side of her neck protruding outwards, making it look oddly out of place on her girlish, petite body. "Enough! I've had enough!"

Just a minute ago she had been resigned to the fact that they were both going to die here. Now, she was filled with an irresistible urge to fight back. She wanted to live. Not only that, she wanted to live till she was old, with Lee by her side, not like this. She posed a great deal of intuition, but she came to realise that the word itself was just an elaborate term for a good guesser. This time, she had guessed wrong. Neither of them were going to die. Not today. She was going to make sure of that.

Her hands squirmed and writhed, pulled and jerked and twisted, her fingers clawing and tugging at the pieces of rope that had come partly loose. Looser. Even looser. It was coming undone. She didn't have a lot of time. Lee's dad was advancing on her like a bull that had focused its anger on a piece of red cloth billowing in the warm Spanish wind. The pain in her wrists was intense and felt like it was burning through her flesh, but she carried on. Had to. Lee started screaming at his own father, begged him to stop, but he was advancing on Jessica with the intent to kill her. She didn't need intuition to tell her that.

She lunged to her right just as Lee's dad advanced upon her. He pounded into the wall at breakneck speed and with a force that felt and sounded comparable to that of a high-speed crash. She felt her whole body shudder as the shockwaves reeled through her. He stumbled backwards, blood gushing from his nose and forehead. His head hit the ground, bounced and then hit the ground again. She looked down. He was either unconscious, or dead.

"Dad! Dad!" Lee cried.

"You bitch! You little bitch!" her mother spat.

"Oh my God! Dad! Why?"

"You little whore!"

Jessica couldn't focus on any of the words. To her, it sounded like some sort of grotesque alien orchestra where although they were speaking a different tongue, a part of her subconscious could understand little snippets that she didn't want to hear. Her gaze failed to leave the bloodied mess beneath her. Lee's dad. His own flesh and blood. Was he dead? Had she really killed her boyfriend's father?

Her own mother was advancing on her now. Jessica looked up just in time to see a sliver of bright metal glimmering in the cold light. She had willingly brought a knife with her; her own mother. Would she really have used it? Jessica didn't know what to think anymore. So many answers were rushing through her head and she felt like she was going to faint.

"You killed him!" her mother screamed, waving the knife inches to her face. Her eyes were maddening and told Jessica the answer to her question. She realised it was one of those awful questions that you didn't want to know the answer to but ended up being unconsciously answered the more you tried to will it away. She ought to have known years ago. Her mother was a firm believer that the world had been created not by science and the law of psychics, but by some divine entity. She had condemned many people to the depths of hell for simply not believing in God. Worst of all, she had condemned her own daughter to hell for falling in love at such a young age.

She raised the knife upwards with two hands, her body poised in a striking pose, ready to bring the weapon down on Jessica who was as still as a statue; the only part of her that seemed to be moving was her brain, running from question to question, racing to one morbid thought to the other. Her head was pulsing. She thought it might explode. Her eyes were focused on the gleam of the metal which outshone everything else; it stuck out like a star against a darkened sky.

Without warning, her mother let out a shriek and fell hard onto the floor. Her head smashed against the dusty concrete and her arms flailed uselessly. The knife spun, out of control, coming to rest a few metres away from her arm. Jessica looked to her right and saw Lee with his left leg sticking out as far as it could go. His arms were useless as they were tied behind his back, so he had used the next best thing and swept his girlfriend's attacker off her feet.

"I couldn't let her do that to you," he puffed, that one little manoeuvre taking the breath out of him. "I just couldn't."

"Lee," she cried. "Lee, thank you. She…she really would have done it, wouldn't she? Mum…"

She looked down at the woman who was supposed to be her mother, lying there with her face to the floor, spitting out bits of dust and stone and debris. Her brooch had come unattached to her cardigan and was lying close to the discarded knife. Jessica could care less about the woman wrongly entitled her mother and instead ran towards the knife and picked it up. It felt so cold, so deadly, as if blood-thirsty intent had been poured magically into the metal. Her hand was shaking. She cut the rope binding Lee's hands together and helped him to his feet. She lobbed the knife as far away as she could throw it.

"Dad," Lee muttered as he looked down at him. He was conscious, but dazed. He had sat himself up and was propped against the wall that had been his downfall. His eyes were rolling and his nose and forehead were bleeding heavily. He was sighing and moaning, occasionally adding in an "oww" as if garnering for sympathy. He wasn't about to get any from his son. Instead, Lee kicked him hard in the shin.

"I hate you!" he screamed. "I'm no longer your son. You're nothing to me anymore! Nothing! You bastard! Come on Jess."

Jessica took Lee's hand and as the two of them made towards the basement's door, she turned back and looked at the woman. She was on her hands and knees now and she was crying. Jessica felt no remorse. She knew that those tears weren't meant for her. Those tears were tears of self-pity and Jessica loathed her for that.

"I hate you…" she mumbled before Lee ushered her out the basement door. Neither of them looked back at the day they should have died. They lived for the future. They had each other and realised that for the rest of their lives, the rest of their future, they would only have each other. It wasn't a negative thought. In fact, it was quite the opposite. They had each other and as long as they had that bond, everything would be okay.

The End


End file.
